Heartland Festival Orchestra's fourth season begins with the guitar

It's not for nothing that Heartland Festival Orchestra's opening concert Sept. 8 at Five Points Washington is titled "Music's Fire." From the wailing oboe in Manuel de Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance" to the somewhat mischievous, energetic opening of Georges Bizet's Symphony in C M...

By GARY PANETTA

Journal Star

By GARY PANETTA

Posted Sep. 2, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Sep 2, 2012 at 1:05 AM

By GARY PANETTA

Posted Sep. 2, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Sep 2, 2012 at 1:05 AM

WASHINGTON

It's not for nothing that Heartland Festival Orchestra's opening concert Sept. 8 at Five Points Washington is titled "Music's Fire."

From the wailing oboe in Manuel de Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance" to the somewhat mischievous, energetic opening of Georges Bizet's Symphony in C Major, the first concert of Heartland Festival Orchestra's fourth season promises to throw off at least a few sparks.

But add the dancing-fingers-on-the-fretboard appeal of 20th century Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Double Guitar Concerto - performed by Joao Luiz and Douglas Lora, members of the award-winning Brasil Guitar Duo - and you have a concert that may well live up to its name.

"I think it will be interesting for the audience to hear the way the two guitarists combine," said David Commanday, Heartland Festival Orchestra's artistic director. "It's maybe somewhat parallel to having two hands on a piano. When there's a close collaboration between two guitarists, it's not going to be antiphonal, you're not going to be always distinguishing which guitar is doing which voice. It's a little bit like an expansion of the possibilities of a single guitar."

Guitars naturally call to mind Spain, famous for its use of the instrument. And a standout of 20th century Spanish culture is composer Manuel de Falla, whose ballet "El Amor Brujo" ("Love the Magician") remains one of the masterpieces of that nation's second golden age of culture, cut short by Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship.

The ballet tells the story of one Candelas, a beautiful gypsy girl haunted by the memory of her former lover - an evil, savage man who, although dead, exerts an uncanny power over Candelas beyond the grave.

Heartland Festival Orchestra will perform one section of the ballet, "Ritual Fire Dance," a dance-exorcism in which the spirit of Candelas' jealous lover is raised and consigned to flames.

The sequence will be choreographed by Servy Gallardo, the Peoria Ballet's artistic director, and will include two dancers from the company, Allexe Slevin and Lark Commanday.

Georges Bizet's Symphony in C rounds out the program. Composed when Bizet was 17, the symphony remained buried in the composer's papers long after his death in 1875. The world-premiere of the piece took place in Basel in 1935.

"I think of the champagne, or if we're talking about fire, sparklers," Commanday said. "Just the effervescent joy of this piece is inimitable. The interesting thing about the many interesting things about it is that he wrote it when he was 17. It's astonishing, it's effortless perfection. It seems to be effortless. And I think it's perfect, really."